


Stairway to Heaven

by beekeepercain



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Afterlife, Angst, Character Death, Deathfic, Destiel - Freeform, Fluff, Heaven, M/M, Memories, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-24
Updated: 2012-12-24
Packaged: 2017-11-22 06:15:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/606710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beekeepercain/pseuds/beekeepercain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"There’s a feeling I get when I look to the west, and my spirit is crying for leaving. In my thoughts I have seen rings of smoke through the trees, and the voices of those who stand looking."</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stairway to Heaven

**Author's Note:**

> Have an usually painful Christmas, SPN fandom, and suffer well. This is my gift to you.

Dean wasn’t fast enough, not anymore. He had been faster before that spirit had thrown him down the stairs and broken his leg two years ago, and maybe some odd ten years before that, he hadn’t been so clumsy either. So when the creature caught him and he felt its sharp teeth digging right through his neck and tearing it apart, he wasn’t surprised. His mind became cloudy so fast he had little time to even feel shocked, and the flash of pain was gone as quickly as it had appeared. His body knew it was dying and he drowned in the mixed signals, and then in the lack of them.  
The last thing he knew was the feel of blood rushing up and out of his mouth as the jaws of the swamp-smelling hound closed around his throat again and broke through it, crushing his neck in what was the final act of mercy for Dean, and just the fastest way to get through him for the beast.

The darkness lasted forever. As if through murky water, an alarm sounded, and Dean reached a hand to turn it off. His fingers brushed the hard surface of his car’s dashboard and he woke up, his eyes feeling like a newborn’s. There was no weight in his body when he rose up from the relaxed position he’d slept in. He glanced around, finding himself at the side of a forest road. The alarm was coming from the car’s radio, and half-knowingly he pushed it off, the button pressing down submissively until a soft click that finally killed the power and the noise.  
The man rubbed his forehead, trying to remember why he was there, where he’d been before. He recalled the hound launching at him in the dream, but nothing besides that, and most importantly, nothing about ever driving here, wherever ‘here’ even was. Without thinking, he turned the keys to turn the engine on, not stopping to wonder why the radio had been on if the car wasn’t running. Impala shivered and shook as it woke up to his call, its headlights flashing through the gathering light mist in twilight’s blue dark. He straightened the course out of the side of the road, heading for anywhere that was in front. The unpaved road carried on for what seemed like an eternity, but despite the eeriness of his surroundings, and his absolute lack of knowledge why he was there, Dean didn’t feel fear.  
He was confident and calm, determined to figure his way out, no matter what would wait for him there. He’d been through a lot - he knew he’d make it again.

As the car moved through the forest, the fingers of his free hand turned on the radio again and shuffled through the empty channels of noise, finally hitting a station that sounded perfect for the purpose, with Led Zeppelin song just starting as he tuned in. Now satisfied, he touched the worn leather of his jacket out of a habit of assuring himself he was comfortable and good to go.  
That was when he realised the jacket had been ripped apart at least seven years ago, and he’d left it behind in a burning building, so there was no way he was currently wearing it. The realisation hit him so hard he had to slow down, and as he did so, another thought hit him - Impala was just as dead as the coat was, had been for at least two years. He’d crashed it, sending Sam to hospital, and he’d never gotten around to fixing it, too much had happened since, he’d had nowhere to stay long enough to do anything about its state.  
He breathed out and swallowed thickly, afraid to turn the mirror.  
“Where the hell are we, Baby?” he muttered, landing both his hands on the wheel.

Silence was what greeted him. Thick, dull silence that in its oppressiveness was much like a muffled scream from somewhere inside his mind.  
Dean tried looking through his pockets for his phone, but found nothing aside from a battered lighter and a few grains of salt. With a grave decision, he pressed his foot down on the pedal and carried on the path laid out ahead of him. He found he still lacked fear - what he had was suspicion.

He drove on for what seemed like forever before the forest ended. Ahead of him was a vast scenery of dark fields, with no lit windows in the horizon. The sky bent across him as dark as ever, he couldn’t even see the shapes of the clouds blocking the stars from sight. And on that road, he drove onward still, feeling a certain melancholy settling in the pit of his stomach. He’d been here before.  
This was someone else’s ground, someone else’s dream, someone else’s world. As he drove through it, he felt a sense of direction forming to him, like a compass was turning inside his heart somewhere and leading him on. He followed it and to the tune of his favourite rock songs, memories trickled like water down slippery rocks. The last time he’d seen Sam: his hair longer than ever, dressed in worn comfortable plaid shirt and a pair of jeans, holding a baby boy in his arms and smiling. He’d let him go after the crash, and Sam had done what he did best, followed his nose, and walked right into the life he’d chased. He had a tendency of carrying on like that.  
Dean had visited him a few weeks ago, eaten a meal prepared by his dark-eyed wife whose smile felt like it lit up the entire room, and he’d left them in their traditional American house in a car that creaked when he turned the steering wheel. He’d intended to repair it, but now was too late to do that, he’d already realised that much.

He hadn’t said goodbyes, but he hoped Sam knew how he felt either way. He loved his brother. He loved him more than he’d ever loved anyone else, but in a different manner than he’d loved the one he’d lost.

That thought was too painful - he swallowed it, turned the volume up, and continued on, driving faster than before. He knew where he was going, even if he couldn’t know what he was headed for.

Years had gone by him, time ticking in the drops of blood he’d spilled, seconds like the stream he’d cut out of killers, minutes like those he’d lost from himself during his hunting trips. Hours were the memories of deaths of the ones he tried to protect; days the ache he tried to cover by gathering more seconds and minutes like a madman hoarding grains of sand to build a pyramid over the grave of his sanity.  
Dean let the name drop from his lips like a sigh.

He had heard the sound of the angel’s feathers every night in his dreams, but twelve years had passed since he’d last heard it outside his own realm. He’d lost track of what was real, too often he stayed with the male in his dreamworld and he could never be certain if he’d truly been there, or if it was just the memory of him that haunted Dean’s rest. He’d cried out his name during his hour of need so many times he’d lost count of that, too, but he’d never gotten a reply. He’d never gotten an answer as to why he was left alone, either, but inside him somewhere he knew the reason was plain impossibility, the very nature of them together, the way they stood against order of nature and fate. That was why they were torn and broken. That was why they’d never had the chance to become what they had reached for.  
He had accepted it, buried his childish hopes and mourned them in silence. But he hadn’t forgotten.  
Of course he had not forgotten.

The memory of the angel had followed him everywhere, and sometimes he could feel the other near him, most often when he was fighting to death in impossible situations. He felt him nearing him, closing in on him, and he’d gotten courage from that feeling. Courage, strength and hope - all that he needed to survive.  
Until that dream from which he had woken now. It felt like he’d just arrived here a moment ago, yet he’d been driving for forever. This was what made him certain of where he was - the timeless nature of his existence.

He’d arrived at a crossing. The path he’d followed had grown wider, now fit for equipment needed for farming, wide enough for tractors and hard enough to support a harverster’s weight. From it strayed a path that grew grass, its dust darker than that of the road he’d driven on, and it was this path his heart chose, so he turned the car to it and started to climb up a gently rising hill. Forest grew around him again, tall dark fir trees forming a wall on his each side. The clouds were breaking apart and he could see glimpses of the brightest and most beautiful stars he’d ever seen, their formations and detail clear in the sky with no light polluting the perfect night that had fallen around him.  
After the slow climb the path turned. It lead him deeper and deeper to the forest until he could see mountains rising up against the clearing sky far in the distance. Inside him grew a certainty; he was close now.

Finally he turned to an opening. There was a small wooden cottage there, waiting for him and only him. He parked the car by its side, afraid to step out, afraid to look in front of him. He was home, but he feared he was home alone - the moment of truth felt crushing upon the heart of his soul, pressing against him so that he felt like he was about to pass out from fear. And this was genuine fear, fear of being alone forever, fear of loss, all of it on him at once.  
He breathed and breathed, feeling the starry sky above him slowly turn before he finally had gathered enough courage to push open the car’s door.

He heard the gentle waves crashing around the base of the dock and washing upon the golden sands. Like he was stuck in slow motion, he tried to raise his head, failing. Instead, he stepped forwards, one step, two steps, leading his unwilling self all the way up to the dock. When he laid the tip of his shoe upon the first wooden plank, he raised his head, and suddenly he felt warm and like he could breathe again. Happiness, sadness, longing, relief, and the strongest love he’d felt washed over him like the waves washed the wood below him, and he took off running. The time it took to reach the end of the dock where the figure was standing felt like forever, but finally he could wrap his arms around the warm shape of his angel, and in a moment that was carved into his soul like colour a brush painted upon a black and white canvas, he felt the other’s arms bending around him to welcome him there like he’d never been welcomed before.  
He pushed his head into the warm chest of the angel and breathed in his scent, unable to say anything for the longest of time.  
Castiel held him tight and seemed to feel just like he did - his embrace spoke in a language Dean could barely understand, but from which he could read the longing he’d felt that was now breaking loose and pouring onto the feel of Dean’s body near his.  
Or, it wasn’t really Dean’s body anymore, it was his soul. They’d never been this close before.

“I missed you so much, Cas,” the human finally managed to breathe out.  
He raised his eyes from the angel’s shoulders to his eyes almost nervously, but found the other smiling a sad smile that still reached his eyes and turned their expression warm, and full of a feeling Dean felt was too strong for either of them to let out properly. It had to be released in a slow, careful way, and doing that would take a long while, but for the first time ever, Dean didn’t feel in hurry. As certainly as there was no time in this place, there was no need for haste either. They had such a long while now that Dean’s young mind couldn’t even begin to grasp the idea of it. Castiel placed his hand on Dean’s shoulder and held him.

“I was with you, always, as close as I could be,” the angel said softly, “but never close enough. I’ve never waited for such a long time, Dean. I’ve never known the flow of time as I’ve known it now, waiting for yours to run out. It’s such a vanishing moment in eternity, yet it felt like all of it to me, like it’d never come to pass.”

Dean couldn’t help the smile that rose up just the other corner of his mouth.  
“That’s the prettiest way anyone has ever told me I took my damn time dying, Cas,” he grunted, amusement clear in his voice.

Castiel let out a sigh and looked away, a shamed hint of a smile on his lips as well.  
“You made me selfish,” he finally said in an apologetic tone of voice, turning back to look Dean in the eye with a faint glimpse of playfulness in his expression, “And greedy, and very much less like the angel I used to be, Dean Winchester.”

“Cas.”  
It was like they’d never grow tired of repeating one another’s names, like neither of them believed to be truly there now, together, finally as close as they could be.  
“I feared you wouldn’t be here.”

The angel smiled.  
“I never wanted to be anywhere else,” he said, and before silence could fall between them again for the briefest of moments, Dean leaned in to kiss him on the mouth, his both hands brushing into the coarse, thick hair on the back of his head.

When Castiel’s lips joined into it, for a passing moment Dean could feel his true form leaking into him like a wave of purest energy, barely touching him and completely filling him at the same time, satisfying the need for closeness his being had screamed for just a mere moment before.  
This was his heaven, the paradise he’d dreamed of for so long.


End file.
